Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., and the impossible burden of a famous name.

Theodore Roosevelt taught his eldest son to imagine himself as “the principal actor in great events.” For Theodore Roosevelt Jr., those words became both an inspiration and a burden.

The son of one of America’s most larger-than-life presidents, Ted Jr. grew up under the weight of extraordinary expectations. As a boy, the pressure was so intense that he suffered debilitating migraines. As a man, he spent a lifetime trying to prove himself worthy of the Roosevelt name, through public service, politics, and, above all, war.

His father had become a national hero charging into battle with the Rough Riders in 1898. Nearly half a century later, at age fifty-six, Ted Jr. walked onto Utah Beach with the first wave of soldiers on D-Day, leaning on a cane as German fire swept the shore. When the invasion force landed far from its intended position, Roosevelt helped turn confusion into momentum, directing men and materials from the beach and helping launch the Allied advance into Europe. He would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions.

But Fathers and Sons: The Roosevelts is more than a chronical of two celebrated warriors. It is the intimate story behind their public courage: a demanding father and the sensitive son who adored him; a young man who wanted a military career his father initially discouraged; and an adult son who continued measuring himself against Theodore Roosevelt long after his father’s death.

The echoes were everywhere. Ted named his World War II jeep “Rough Rider” after his father’s famous regiment. The lessons Theodore Roosevelt had given him on childhood walks—talking history and teaching him to picture himself at the center of consequential events—followed him all the way to Normandy. Yet his father never lived to see the final measure of the man his son became.

Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919, shortly after the First World War, knowing that one son had been killed and Ted had been wounded and gassed. He never saw Ted return to Europe in another world war. He never saw him walk Utah Beach. And he never knew that his son, too, would receive the Medal of Honor.

In the story of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the great questions between fathers and sons become inseparable from American history: How much should a father demand? When does expectation inspire, and when does it wound? How does a son honor an extraordinary father without disappearing inside his shadow? And can a son ever know whether he finally made his father proud?

Set against San Juan Hill, World War I, and the beaches of Normandy, Fathers and Sons: The Roosevelts is a story of inheritance, ambition, sacrifice, and the lifelong struggle of one remarkable son to become his own man while remaining unmistakably his father’s son.